Author Meghann Myers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpMJeUAUfkE (Skip to 5:10. Wall Street Journal video via YouTube) Mixed martial arts superstar Ronda Rousey took down her opponent in 34 seconds in a fight heard ’round the world Aug. 1. The Wall Street Journal re-posted its May interview with Rousey this week in honor of her victory, and in it, she gives some insight into what might have become of her if she’d taken another path: WSJ sports columnist Jason Gay: So if, Beijing [summer 2008 Olympics], you had won gold — you would be doing what now? Rousey: I’d probably be a rescue swimmer for the Coast Guard.…

Assateague Island, Virginia, is known for its population of wild horses, which every year are rounded up and brought across the channel to Chincoteague Island, where some are auctioned off to keep the numbers under control. But in order to get there, they have to swim, so the Chincoteague Wild Pony Swim enlists the help of the Coast Guard to keep the horses safe. Several 24-foot Special Purpose Craft-Shallow Water boat crews from Station Chincoteague maintained a safety perimeter from other boats and people as they swam the channel, with thousands of spectators looking on Wednesday. The tradition dates back…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQmllwTKtqU In the Coast Guard, they say, ‘You gotta go out.’ But they don’t say you gotta come back in. Fifty years ago, two oil tankers were ripped apart by an terrifying blizzard off the coast of Massachusetts, but most of the men on board survived thanks to the crew of a 36″ Coast Guard life boat. This winter Disney will release “The Finest Hours,” based on the 1952 rescue of the SS Fort Mercer and SS Pendleton by Coasties from Lifeboat Station Chatham on the south coast of Cape Cod. The movie stars Chris Pine as Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class…

Eric Dane isn’t a SWO. He just plays one on TV. But his late father, William Melvin, was an aviation boatswain’s mate in the Vietnam War era. To honor his service, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus presented Dane with a shadow box of his awards June 12 at the season 2 premiere “The Last Ship” in Washington, D.C., attended by sailors in the area. On the show, Dane plays Cmdr. Tom Chandler, skipper of the destroyer Nathan James and more or less humanity’s last hope of survival against an apocalyptic virus. “I’m here because I love Washington, I love the Navy and…

Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford began testing the ship’s new electromagnetic aircraft launch system in Virginia’s James River on June 5, but before they can launch real aircraft, they have to practice. It’s not quite like a real, live flight deck, but it’s close. Gone are the cargo pants, brightly colored turtlenecks and helmets. Instead, a sailor in blueberries and a hard hat mimics the signals of a deck handler before the catapult launches a weight sled out over the river in a graceful swan dive. The slow motion impact with the water at the end is rather dramatic. EMALS testing began June 5, the latest step…

Most people think of the Naval Academy’s annual Herndon climb as a hot, sweaty, smelly slog up a greased obelisk that can last for hours as mids climb up and tumble down. But it really depends on what kind of music you set it to. The Naval Academy put this video together of Monday’s climb, set to a jaunty instrumental number. The class of 2018 went from plebes to midshipmen after one hour and 38 minutes scrambling up the Herndon monument. In the end, Midshipman 4th Class Javarri Beachum, a 19-year-old Florida native, put an end to it all when he nudged a…

The Islamic State group is trying to work on its special forces prowess. Well, they’ve got their work cut out for them, according to combat vets that viewed a recently released promotional video by the extremist group. The video, first posted by news site Vocativ, features a dozen scenes of training, door breaching and amphibious sneak attacks. There are countless reasons why this whole thing is a giant soup sandwich, a former Navy SEAL told Navy Times in a Wednesday interview. Starting with: Why kind of special ops mission happens in broad daylight? “Well, the only thing that they had…

Intruders beware: When this 80-pound German Shepherd isn’t patrolling Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, he’s training to take trespassers down at the drop of a command. Bleck, a 6-year-old German Shepherd, is assigned to Navy Installations Command as a member of Pax River’s force protection team along with his handler, Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Evan Desrosiers. Desrosiers knew when he joined the Navy more than a decade ago that he wanted to be a dog handler, he told Navy Times Tuesday, but he had to spend some time in the fleet as an MA before he could get orders for training at…

The Navy’s operational security program is making a big push for sailors and and their families to lock down their social media presence lately, in the wake of a list of service members posted to an Islamic State group supporter’s website last month. Though no imminent threats have been made against sailors, officials urged personnel to tighten the privacy settings on their social media accounts by making them private or unsearchable, and removing any military affiliation from their accounts. But the internet is a labyrinth of accessible personal information and confusing privacy settings, so the experts at Navy Information Operations…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k92hcUzEBc Last winter, a Florida manatee found himself lost and alone off the coast of Texas. In February, he finally got to return home, with help from a Coast Guard HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft and some Coast Guard aviators from the Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Alabama. A sheriff’s deputy found the manatee, dubbed Trinidad, a Tampa Bay native found in the cold waters of an energy plant’s outflow near Houston, Texas back in November. He was transported to Sea World San Antonio for rehab, where researchers determined he was a known Gulf Coast manatee who’d been first observed in 2001.…